Angry old man

Baradwaj Rangan spends an afternoon with an angry Kiran Nagarkar, who talked about poverty, education, everything except his latest book.

The afternoon I met Kiran Nagarkar, he did not want to talk too much about his new book, the latest (last?) instalment of the story that began in Ravan and Eddie and barrelled through The Extras. He did not even want to talk about the significance of its title: Rest in Peace. “I think it would be lovely if you found out after reading the book,” he told me. He chose to talk about other things – like Vishal Bhardwaj’s Macbeth adaptation, Maqbool, which Nagarkar remembered when trying to talk about his book without actually talking about it. “When Tabu is seducing this guy… she was just magnificent… but I didn’t think this guy was worth it… mouth perpetually open… Macbeth is supposed to be a great general… I didn’t get that feeling.” Then, attacked by a bout of coughing, Nagarkar told me gravely, “Never get old. Please make a note of it and follow up on it.”

Nagarkar was born in 1942. The way he put it made this simple fact sing. “I am one of the creatures born on the cusp of Independence.” One of his heroes, naturally, is Gandhi, “that wispy old man. I can never forget what he said, an eye for an eye… I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true.” Then, he moved on to his other hero. “I know Nehru is completely persona non grata today, but whatever you say, boy, did he back Homi Bhabha. I am talking about TIFR. Where do we get our IITs and IIMs from? Look at all the appointments being made today. We’re not looking at merit anymore. We’re not looking at vision anymore. We are looking at whether the guy is of a particular hue within the BJP setup. Is there any better way of killing education?”

These aren’t rhetorical musings, and this isn’t your average helpless citizen’s anger. Poverty and education have been the two central themes of Nagarkar’s life. “You want to get out of poverty? The best chance you have is education. Pour all the money into that. But today, we’re asked to think of science as the transplantation of an elephant’s head. Is this what you want your children to learn? How come parents are not standing up and saying, ‘I will not take this?’” At least part of this tirade stems from the reason Nagarkar is in town. Later that day, he was to deliver the Günter Grass Memorial Lecture at IIT-Madras, about the role of a public intellectual. Nagarkar doesn’t say it, but the question hangs in the air: How can public intellectuals exist in a nation that does not value education?

Nagarkar came across this “word pairing” fairly recently. “It’s my ignorance,” he said, “my inability to be living in the time that we do. But if the term ‘public intellectual’ is used in the context of one particular person, I don’t want to delve into whether it enhances the quality of that pairing or whether it does something that is infinitely worse. Intellectualism seems to have gone down the tubes in India, just as it has in America.” Nagarkar paused, then said softly, “I am upset with myself for not being able to control my anger. Getting excited doesn’t help. You have to be in control.” A little later, he changed his mind. “Something worse than getting angry is to get angry and forget about it the next day.”

Nagarkar talked about a lot of things, seemingly random things – but only seemingly. He turned wistful one moment. “There’s no country in the world that won its freedom the way we won it. There was idealism, wonderful idealism.” The next moment, the anger was back. “I wrote about wanting the chawls to disappear. My words are now coming true and I can’t tell you how I regret it. We have built multistory slums, but the standard of living of the poor hasn’t improved.” Nagarkar is disappointed with his countrymen. “I thought my people would take care of the poor, as the colonisers did not. But we have turned out to be better colonisers.”

Nagarkar moves briskly – and yes, angrily – between the home and the world. He was raised on a diet of old issues of Time and Newsweek, so part of his wrath is reserved for figures like Ho Chi Minh and Stalin. The rest he saves for their Indian counterparts. “Because the numbers here are less, does that make it any less of a crime? And no comeuppance. No judicial process which pinpoints who is responsible.” I asked him if he was talking about anything specific. He said, “I am talking about many specific things. I am not talking about Partition – but of course I’m talking about the anti-Sikh riots, about the massacre of Muslims in Bombay after the 1992 bomb blasts, about Gujarat.” Nationalism, said Nagarkar, is being defined by one community. “One particular mother party is dictating what it is.”

That is why, he said, his talk wasn’t going to be about public intellectuals after all. It was going to be about the three-year-old Syrian boy whose dying words were: “I’m going to tell God everything.” Nagarkar asked me, “Can you see what he’s going to tell God, what he will tell about you and me?”

This inclusiveness is gracious, but Nagarkar lives in a rarefied realm – he’s an artist. I asked if people like him could do something about all this that an ordinary citizen couldn’t. He went back to Günter Grass. “Grass expected every writer, every artist to go out there and do something. That is not my demand. Because some artists are too reclusive. But the majority, do they even know there is poverty? Because they exist for us only when a highrise comes up and you want your floor to be cleaned. I don’t want you to go work for an NGO, but at least be aware. Time and again, I’ve said this. I can’t change the world. And a book can’t change the world. But you bet I can try. I have no business to be around if I don’t try.”

Mr Rangan, I dont know whether you agree with this particular gentlemen and his views. But I do detect a patronizing tone all throughout. I find that objectionable. I consider you to be a more sensible person than that. This person seems to be, well another pseudo intellectual, pseudo secular, citizen of the world in the mould of Arundhati Roy. Just keep blaming Hindus and the major Hindu party for everything wrong with this country. bombay riots & Gujarat riots are the only worthy crime for these people. He makes it sound as only this government practice patronage of its party ideologues in educational institutions and positions. This has been going on since Nehru. The damage that those people has done to our country and educational institutes with teaching selective history whitewashing all atrocities committed on our country by the invading forces, that’s what did the most damage to this country

Interesting article, Rangan. I’d thoroughly enjoyed Ravan and Eddie, but had never gotten around to reading The Extras. I admire his anger, and I agree with him that one must at least try to make a change. We owe our future generations at least that much.

I agree with Shastri. I too am exhausted by the tired argument that of all the political people in the country, the devil (particularly the non-secular devil) exists with the BJP. If anything, at least under PM Modi, I have expectations of administrative changes for the better, whereas with others, I daren’t even hope for something better. How do exalted intellects like Mr. Nagarkar not see this? Are they blind to the blatant embezzling of public money under the various Gandhi people? Or it that such a trivial crime/misdimeanour for them? And since when is FTII (I am assuming he is referring to the ongoing controversy there) an equivalent of an IIT or an IIM. I don’t mean to be elitist because I am personally a student of neither, but I think this whole controversy is a manufactured one. If I am not mistaken, FTII has had political cronies as heads in the past, and some of its past heads have been people with no dazzling credentials whatsoever. And I have no concern with Mr. Chauhan, but I find raking the issue of his working in porn movies very, very sad. Is it not possible that he was working in such movies as a struggling actor trying to pay his bills? I am not sure if this was the case, but I am sure it could have been. I am surprised that no one, absolutely no one, seems to bring that up-the fact of struggling with penury while trying to book a role of consequence as an actor/actress. And I did like his portrayal of Yudhisthir. And I don’t think Chauhan is the only man to have plummeted to the depth of doing porn movies. David Dachovny, the famous X-files actor who many view as very intelligent especially considering his academic prowess, was a sometime porn-movie actor in his early days. I’d have thought self-styled intellectuals would have known that. I’m sorry to rant here about the issue but I was reading Outlook, and the whole cover-story sensationalization of a relatively trivial issue, and making the striking students out to be some sort of “brave hearts” riled me up, and make “premier” Indian journalism seem so naive and lacking. Aren’t they embarrassed by their own writing and the thinking it sends across? Sorry, Brangan, your wonderful blog does not deserve this rant, but reading some of the quotes from your interviewee were the last straw that broke this camel’s back 🙂

venkatesh/Utkal, respect your opinions but the truth of the matter is, once a piece of writing is in the Public Domain, it’s Open Season on how people choose to read, view it, latch onto certain portions of it, absorb it as a whole, interpret it, like it, love it, decry it, condemn it, ascribe motives which the author never had or co-opt it into their own personal agendas.

You know what they say about opinions being like the opening at the lower end of the alimentary canal…..

I really wanna grab a copy of Kiran Nagarkar. His views are terrific and his anger is deep and sincere. However from the comments below, I have one question to ask. Why can’t people who see that the party/organisation they believe in is being criticised in this space, engage in a debate to confront the ideas rather than objecting to your patronising tone for the views of the interviewee? Don’t their views unwittingly reflect the legacy of their darling organisation?

The simple question Kiran is asking and a few comments have taken offence to is why is no one paying the price for the loss of innocent lives? He did ask about anti-sikh riots. The undeniable truth is that the 1992 riots and 2002 Gujarat riots are the legacy of BJP-RSS combo, just as 1984 anti-sikh riots is the legacy of congress. The sad truth is politically connected people don’t pay for their blatant crimes, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. To always brand a person as pseudo-secular just because he questions your world view, is missing the whole point.

Loved the closing line “I have no business to be around if I don’t try”

BR , IIRC you have interviewed him before , do you have link to that interview, please?

From my experience, people who bandy about the word ‘pseudo-secular’ have never appreciated anything or anyone secular, just as anyone prone to use the word ‘pseudo-intellectual’ too often have never appreciated anything or anyone genuinely intellectual.

@ Srinivas“The sad truth is politically connected people don’t pay for their blatant crimes, even in the face of overwhelming evidence”

Forget about paying. They’re moving up the ranks. There’s no point even discussing who is the lesser evil! The best thing about Satyameda Jayate was the data points Aamir use to provide to bring in the facts of life!

“34% of winners in Lok Sabha 2014 have criminal charges against them. The results are out. The winners of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections have been declared. The people have made their decision.

However, from among the leaders who will shape the future of the country, almost one-third have criminal cases filed against them. That is, 186 (34%) out of the 541 winners whose details were analyzed by the Association of Democratic Reforms. This is a jump from the numbers for the 2009 elections, when, out of the 521 winners analyzed, 158 (30%) had declared criminal cases.

We were that rarest of couples. Even after years of marriage we were madly in love. I with her and she with somebody else.
Kiran Nagarkar, Cuckold

You gotta love him for that if nothing else. Really enjoyed reading what this erudite, charming man had to say for himself. I had the opportunity to hear him speak at the Utkal Literature Festival last year and he is an amazing orator in addition to being the consummate word-smith. And he has the most wicked sense of humour!

Nagarkar maybe old but is it ok to call a man an angry old man? We call AB senior not old Bachchan! Of course there is Old man by the Sea. It is cute to call an angry baby but as almost all old men are quite angry and peevish, it does not sound cute to call someone as an angry old man. By the way some people name their kids as baby and they will be babies forever! The other day I got a phone call from one baby with a very mature voice!